Seeker Blog

One thing was clear from John Melo’s Stanford ETL talk — the Amyris strategy is sharply targeted on getting big results without creating a whole new infrastructure. They are worked out a way to make the existing infrastructure produce a high quality biofuel. Yet to be proven is the Amyris claim that “real soon now” the production cost will be competitive with $60/bbl oil.

The Crystalsev joint venture is a perfect example of their targeting — plug their cane juice feedstock into the Amyris process — out should come industrial scale diesel — quality diesel. The value of Amyris technology is demonstrated in the partners JV split:

Amyris is the majority partner in the joint venture with Crystalsev, which itself is majority owned by by Santelisa Vale, the second-largest ethanol and sugar producer in Brazil. The joint venture, which the company said last fall it expected to announce in January, was initially envisioned as a 50-50 partnership, according to Hilleman. The final agreement reflected the increased value Amyris brought to the venture due to advances it had made in its technology, making it a stronger partner, Hilleman said.

Crystalsev’s parent, Santelisa Vale, will provide the joint venture — dubbed with the unwieldy name Amyris-Crystalsev Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento de Biocombustivas Ltda. — with sugarcane and a mill with 2 million tons of sugarcane crushing capacity. That amount of sugarcane can produce 25 million to 35 million gallons of diesel fuel, the joint venture’s initial target.

“By securing a significant supply of the most-sustainable feedstock and collaborating with our world-renowned partners Crystalsev and Santelisa, we now have the ability to take our pioneering technology out of the lab and rapidly scale production toward supplying the needs of the worldwide renewable fuels market,” Amyris CEO John Melo said in a statement.

But Amyris and its partner want to sign deals with other mills in Brazil to scale their production to ultimately produce a billion gallons of the fuel annually. The company wants to commercialize its bio-jet fuel product shortly after its diesel product, but has not set external targets for its bio-gasoline products at this point, according to Hilleman.

Amyris is building a pilot production plant near its Emeryville headquarters that it expects will be up and running in the fourth quarter. The company is perfecting its technology there, but the joint venture has signed a lease for a pilot production facility in Brazil to perfect its processes in real-world conditions. Actual production will take place starting in 2010 in an ethanol plant owned by Santelisa Vale. That plant requires relatively minor engineering changes to enable it to produce ethanol.